“The stuff in the middle? That’s the armored cube right across the tear. If you think of the cosmos as having a wound, that’s the bandage.”

“Increase specificity,” Edison said, reminding Anlyn just who she was dumbing things down for. She rooted around in her childhood studies, then recited in a sing-song manner:

“It’s saturated fluoroalkane in gold alloy armored canisters. The fluorine and carbon are bonded together, making them extremely inert, therefore hard to demolish from the other side.” She took a deep breath. “Still, the Bern do find ways to destroy it now and then. It’s a constant battle to keep enough in place that nothing gets through.”

Edison turned and looked toward the cockpit of the shuttle. His brows were down, his eyes unfocused.

Anlyn smiled at him. “Oh, my. Did I just get too technical for you?”

“Hmm?” He turned to her. “No, I lapsed into ruminations. What prevents the Bern from employing a Birch reduction using electride salts? The ejected anion would destabilize the bond, resulting in one-four cyclohexadienes. Reacting through the rift on such a solution would be elementary, especially considering the electrical conductance of the golden vessels.”

Anlyn shook her head. “Do what?”

“A Birch reduction. Using electride—”

“No, no.” Anlyn waved her arms. “Forget it. Look, talk to some of the physicists about—”

“Chemists,” Edison corrected.

“Okay, talk to the chemists about that. The point is, the stuff works. Mostly.”

“Mostly? Elaborate further.”

“Well—”

Before she could elaborate further, telling him about the frequent escapes and the methods used to chase blockade runners down, the shuttle thumped against the locking collar of the Keep and it was time to depart. One of the flight crew exited the cockpit and opened a hatch forward of them. He bowed and waved them through as Edison and Anlyn left their seats and approached the door.

“Thank you,” Anlyn said, as much for rescuing her from the conver-sation as for the flight. She bowed and then stepped out of the shuttle and into one of the many connecting tubes ringing the Great Rift Keep. Through the transparent passage, she could see the vast network of visisteel corridors stretching out for hundreds of kilometers in every direction. They converged on each other like a Drenard freeway, further than the eye could see. Several shuttles buzzed along the perimeter, their hulls twinkling with navigation lights as they ferried workers from one part of the Keep to another.

Strolling down the passageway to greet them was Lord Bishar Nooo, the Commander of the Keep. Anlyn recognized him more by his elab-orate tunics than his face. They were family—as she could tell by his outermost layers—but they had never actually met.